Breaking
by Checkerboards
Summary: Sorrow shared is sorrow halved. -Sorrow 2-
1. Hate at First Sight

From the outside, Arkham Asylum was a forbiddingly dark brick box that squatted on the ground like a crocodile, waiting for the unwary to venture close so it could snap its iron jaws down upon them. From the inside, though, particularly in the little recreation room, it was almost homey.

Almost is the key word here. There is only so much psychological comfort available from couches and televisions and magazines. It's fairly easy to tune out the noises on the ward and burrow into your own head, provided that no one is being loudly psychotic directly into your ear, and with a bit of imagination it can be a home of sorts.

Of course, at home, you can kick out unwelcome visitors. In the twelve days that Sorrow had been locked away, she'd gotten somewhat accustomed to the quiet routine of the place. The rec room was always fairly silent - the top-tier rogues were not pleased when other inmates acted out, and showed their disapproval in rather violent ways - so the zonked-out schizophrenics twitched and swayed silently in their own fantasies. The inmates today were gathered in their usual clusters, dreaming their normally abnormal dreams...And then, with a _boom_ of slamming doors, the glaring light of the hallway shone in, framing a sickeningly familiar green-haired head.

Sorrow and Harley Quinn looked up from the little table where they'd been playing tic-tac-toe. "Puddin'!" Harley shrieked, jumping to her feet.

Sorrow cringed back toward the wall as Harley left their table and catapulted toward the Joker. He dodged her at the last moment and she smacked hard into the doorframe. "Watch your step," he sniggered.

She dismissed her bleeding forehead and clung to him like a starving man clinging to a ham sandwich. "Oh, Puddin', I missed you so much!"

"I know," he grinned down at her.

A guard, still framed in the doorway, cleared his throat. "You're not supposed to be in here together," he said uncertainly.

"Really?" the Joker said innocently, one arm snaking up around Harley's shoulders.

"One of you has to go back to your cell," the guard said, getting a little bit more courage as the Joker and Harley exchanged a comedically exaggerated pout. "C'mon."

Harley wriggled free and sidled up to the guard. "You wouldn't separate us, would you?" She winked at him. "How're you gonna pay for that new car without us?"

The guard gulped. "Um, have fun," he said, hastily backing out of the room and slamming the door. Harley hugged the Joker with a squeal of triumph.

_So, the guards take bribes_, Sorrow mused to herself, scratching out a line of O's on her paper. _Good to know. _Harley ushered the Joker to the best seat in the room, forcibly tossing its former occupant out before bowing him grandly down. He settled himself and waved to the room in a kingly fashion. Harley danced attendance on him, fetching him playing cards and anything else he'd want from the narrow little shelves.

Sorrow sighed. Well, there went her only entertainment. Harley hadn't been the best of companions - Sorrow had heard enough about the Joker's various qualities to write a ten-book series on him - but at least she'd been friendly.

Not like anyone else in this place had been friendly. Well, not many of them, at any rate. Not for long. For the first few days of her stay, her visits to the rec room had been a steady stream of rogues enjoying themselves by pestering her until Harley chased them off. The Riddler had talked to her in anagrams until her head spun, the Mad Hatter had recited a series of gibberish poems at her, the Ventriloquist's puppet had tried to flirt with her (well, at least she _thought_ so. She had no idea what 'gams' meant, but apparently hers were quite nice, whatever they were) and even the Scarecrow had torn himself away from his book to inquire about her deepest fears and phobias.

She knew perfectly well that these visits were not friendliness. They were entertainment (for _them_, not her) or a way of gauging her threat level to them. At the very least, she was a new audience for their endless stories about how they almost killed Batman that one time, no, really, he was _this close_ to death...Still, she would have gladly sat and listened to Hour Twelve of Ivy's interminable lectures on Corporations Raping The Earth rather than pay another visit to Teng's office.

Harley had curled herself around the Joker's feet and was doing an absolutely spot-on impression of a kitten begging for love. The Joker, on the other hand, was busy ruffling playing cards with one hand and ignoring her. Idly, she began to sketch the two of them. Maybe Harley would like it for her cell wall...if the doctors let her have it.

Psychiatrists. Bah! She wasn't crazy, she fumed as she sketched. She wasn't crazy and there was no need for her to even _have_ a psychiatrist, let alone see him five days a week. Besides, he was crazier than she was!...and since she _wasn't crazy,_ that was easy to do. He kept making up stories out of anything she did. If she sighed, she was depressed. If she was sarcastic, she was repressing her anger. If she was angry, she was exhibiting violent tendencies. If she stayed silent, she was in denial. There was no way to win, and she'd left every one of their handful of sessions in a state of towering fury.

"And what have we here?" Her charcoal stick skittered across the page, uncontrolled, as she looked up into the eyes of the Joker._ Shitohshitohshitohshit_. She should have been watching him.

"A drawing," she answered quietly.

"Let's see it." She gingerly passed over the sheet of paper. He held it up, turning it round and round as if he was uncertain which way was up, and sneered at it. "Back to the drawing board! AH-hahahahahahaha!" He made a grand gesture, as if to rip the paper in two.

"Don't-" The word had left her before she could stop it.

"Don't? And why shouldn't I?"

"It's…for Harley."

"For Harley?" He looked down his long, pointed nose at her. "Harley doesn't need anything from _you_." With quick, precise movements, he tore the drawing into quarters and flung the shreds in her face. An infuriatingly happy smirk stretched his face as he turned on his heel and sauntered away.

Oh, that was _it._ She'd taken nothing but abuse and humiliation for the past week, letting the other rogues walk all over her, letting her so-called psychiatrist make up whatever lies he wanted to about her just to stay out of trouble. Well, screw that! She was sick and tired of being everyone's personal punching bag.

Sorrow shot to her feet. The chair tipped over and slammed down into the floor behind her, echoing like a crack of thunder. The other inmates turned to stare. She was halfway across the room and accelerating, winding up as she approached the Joker's back. With a scowl of hatred on her face, she whipped her arm back and punched him in the kidneys as hard as she could. As he turned, a look of arrogance attempting to overlay the pain she'd caused him, she ripped off her glove and slapped him full across the face.

He put a pale hand to his face and drew it away, fingertips blackened. He looked at them and chuckled as Sorrow folded her arms and glared at him. The laughs grew louder, and louder, until he was almost breathless from hysteria. And then, as if someone had hit the mute button, the laughter stopped. His scarlet smile creaked downward into a frown as a pair of tears slid down his cheeks. As they were joined by more, his knees went limp and dumped him on the floor.

"Puddin'!" Harley caught him as he fell and laid him gently on the ground. With murder in her eyes, she balled up her fists and advanced on Sorrow, snarling "What'd you do to him?"

"Nothing that he didn't have coming to him!" snapped Sorrow.

It's dangerous to infuriate psychotic gymnasts. With a massive twist, Harley sent both feet directly into Sorrow's chest. Sorrow hurtled backward, slamming into the end of a couch. The inmates that had been occupying it scattered like a flock of quail at the first sound of rifles going off.

"You get over here and fix him!" Harley ordered shrilly.

"I can't," Sorrow wheezed, splayed across the arm of the couch. She slowly struggled to her feet, trying her best not to touch her bare hand to the couch.

Harley stamped her foot like a petulant toddler. "Cry on him!"

"I_ can't_," Sorrow repeated. "You're still bleeding. Did you know that?"

"I don't care!" Harley snapped.

"Well, I do," Sorrow retorted. "You'll thank me for this one day."

"Like hell I will! You fix him or I'll kill you!"

Sorrow smiled. "Then go ahead and kill me."

Harley cast her eyes around for a handy weapon. And then it hit her, as Sorrow had hoped it would - if she killed Sorrow, it basically_ ensured_ that the Joker would never get the antidote. She shook with rage. "I was _nice_ to you."

Sorrow sighed and knelt in front of the Joker. He was staring off into nowhere, sobbing quietly to himself. She tried to summon up every sad memory she could - but no, it was useless. She couldn't cry for him. He was a monster. How many news stories had she seen involving him? Thirty? Fifty? And all involving death - husbands, wives, old people, children, babies...He deserved to die and Sorrow simply could not bring herself to save him.

"I'm sorry," she apologized softly to Harley.

With a wail, Harley hit the floor next to the Joker, pulling him into her lap and hugging him close like an oversized doll.

All eyes were on the three-person tableau as Sorrow tentatively patted Harley's shoulder. Harley yanked it away, hissed, and cuddled the Joker closer to her. Slowly, deliberately, one tear fell from Sorrow's eyes. She captured it with one gloved finger and held it over the Joker.

"I can't cry for you, Joker, but I can cry for Harley. I want you to remember how you feel right now every time you raise a hand to her. I want you to remember how you feel right now every time you raise a hand or even speak to any of us. I want you to remember that holding the city in the palm of your hand doesn't ever really make you happy, because you'll never get to hold the city for longer than a day or two, Joker, and true happiness lies in what lasts. I'm giving you this tear hoping that someday you'll be able to learn how to cry for yourself." She turned her finger upside down and smeared the tear down the center of his pointed nose, got up and walked away.

"And next time, keep your art appreciation to yourself."

* * *

Arkham's guards watched the rec room from the safety of the guard station on the next floor down. It wasn't that they were cowardly, or that they didn't care - they cared a great deal about the safety of the rogues. After all, without them, where would they get the spare cash for all of life's little extras? 

However, they were unfamiliar with Sorrow, so when they saw the Joker hit the floor, they were largely unconcerned. It wasn't until Harley Quinn kicked her halfway across the room that they realized there may be more trouble than first met the eye - and when a guard zoomed the little camera in on the stark black handprint on the Joker's face, they knew that something serious was going down.

So they responded as they had been trained to do - with full force. The doors slammed open again and a horde of blue-shirted guards poured in, shooing the uninvolved inmates to the corners of the room as a little cluster in the center broke off to deal with the three troublemakers. The Joker got five guards' personal attention. It didn't matter that he was basically comatose on the floor - he was still dangerous. The remaining four split themselves between Harley and Sorrow, who were both trying to angrily explain things at top volume to one another. A quick round of injections took care of that, and soon they sagged limply to the ground, overwhelmed with the mental coordination involved to keep their legs stiff enough to support them. The guards pulled back together like a massive blue amoeba and drew the troublemakers off down the hallway.

In the corner, Ivy slipped the discarded scraps of paper into her jumpsuit for further study and seated herself by the fern in the corner. Its fronds wrapped lovingly around her hand as she absently patted it.

"I wondered when she'd crack," the Riddler commented from a nearby table. A charcoal stick dangled from his fingers, forgotten in all the fuss.

"Did you," Ivy muttered, not really interested in what he had to say.

He rolled his eyes. "They gave her to Teng."

"In that case, I'm surprised she didn't snap days ago," Ivy remarked, watching a single leaf dance about. "He won't last much longer around here."

"He's lasted a full month," Eddie pointed out.

"Oh, and he's doing _such_ a good job," Ivy sneered elegantly. "She'll probably deal with him like she did with the Joker." She brightened. "Do you think the guards got that on tape? I'd love to have a copy or twelve back at the lair. His _face_ after she punched him! Priceless."

Eddie nodded agreement and went back to his puzzle.

* * *

The injection had knocked her senseless…almost senseless. Reality melted around her like that fake lava stuff in the lamps…the…lava lamps, yeah. She fought for some semblance of reason to her mind as the guards hustled her down the hallways. 

The floors swayed beneath her feet. The walls buckled, caved, stretched out to infinity. Her feet were the size of elephants, of mice, of horse's hooves. She tried to prance, to canter, to gallop, and received a slap on the side of the head.

She could see _everything_.

Her cell door, her cell, her bed…she was home. Home away from home, it was like a camp, a camp for the criminally insane, did that make the psychologists the counselors? She giggled, because for once something was funny, for once there was humor in the world. Another slap, and that wasn't funny at all, and then she was locked back down in the bed, locked again, locked in the basement and the gloves, no, Daddy, no I didn't mean to hurt Momma and she was screaming screaming screaming…

* * *

_Bees?_ she thought muzzily as she slowly regained her senses. There was definitely some weird buzzing noise in the air...how'd bees get into the warehouse? There wasn't some rogue she'd pissed off who kept bees, was there? Bee-man? 

No, wait. Rogues. The fog of tranquilizers drifted a little farther away. She'd seen rogues recently, lots of them. Somewhere...where? She concentrated as hard as she could. Thinking while doped up on whatever they'd injected her with was like wrestling with a greased whale.

Arkham._ That_ was the word that had been hammering at her thoughts. She was in Arkham, right? So why the bees?

_Snap. Zzzzzzzzzzz._ Oh. It was just the flourescent lights flickering. She slowly forced her eyelids up and confirmed her theory. Yeah. Lights. They hadn't been this bad this morning, though. She let her head roll to the side, expecting to see the pale grey stone of her cell walls.

Instead, she saw a bench outfitted with manacles. _Huh_? She shook her head sharply, willing the chemicals to leave her mind alone. Where the hell was she? She tried the other side of the room. The giant storage closet and the sink finally reminded her what room she was in - the intake room, with stacks of uniforms piled neatly in the closet along with intake forms and a selection of restraints for every occasion. She'd spent a good two hours there her first night in Arkham.

And why was she sitting up? Beds didn't sit up. But she was on a bed and sitting up, and the paradox left her blinking in confusion for a full five minutes. As she fought to get a coherent thought together, the door opened. Teng glanced in, smiled at her, and went on his way.

Her eyelids shut themselves without her consent as her body informed her that she was going back to sleep. She dozed for a while in peace.

When she finally woke back up, the medications had finally worn off enough for rational thought to once again join forces with her, along with the powers of observation. The first thing she noticed was the dry crust of drool adorning her chin. She instinctively reached up to scratch it off.

Her hands were firmly attached to the bedside. Her head snapped forward to examine this new indignity. She was expecting leather straps, maybe handcuffs, maybe that weird leather/lambswool combination that she'd seen in that movie about the bratty kid who made everyone think his new stepmom had rabies.

What she actually saw was much worse. Not the restraints - they were just thick canvas straps securing her arms to the frame of the bed. No, the thing that made her heart leap into her throat was the set of gloves that someone had stuffed her hands into.

She hadn't told Teng anything about the gloves her father had put her in. But great (and sadistic) minds often thought alike. If he had seen a picture of those gloves from years ago he couldn't have done a better job of re-creating them.

The gloves themselves were made of steel mesh. Someone had dipped them in latex, making them waterproof as well as impossible to cut off. A pair of handcuffs, sawn apart at the chain, secured each hand firmly inside the gloves. And in case she'd had any bright ideas about weaseling the glove down through the handcuff, there was a thin ring of metal spot-welded into the wrist that would be impossible to thread through the tightly clipped cuff.

She stared at them in rising terror. They wouldn't have had these just laying around somewhere. They had to have been specifically made for her use. And the more she stared at them, the more she thought about that girl she'd been years ago, locked in the basement, mired in the darkness and hearing her mother's voice sobbing in her nightmares...

She didn't realize she was shrieking and yanking frantically on the straps until the door slammed open. "Ah, ah ah! None of that, little girl," Teng said as he strolled in.

"Get them off!" she begged in a rising wail. Dr. Teng smirked at her.

"Ah, my dear, you've shown that you cannot be trusted to leave unlocked gloves on, and we really can't have you running around without gloves, no no, we really can't."

Well, obviously pleading wasn't going to help. Since that was all she could reasonably try, she gave up and let her anger surge up. "I'm not running anywhere with all these straps on!" She yanked pointedly on her wrist restraints again and glared at him.

"This is also true, my dear, but we also couldn't have you getting up before we gave you your new round of medication." He grinned at her, then went over to the cupboard.

"Medication?" Sorrow was instantly on high alert. Something was up. She didn't _take_ medication. She didn't need it. She _wasn't crazy_.

"Yes, my child. Now, I've read and reread your history…_fascinating,_ I might add," and here Sorrow growled at him, knowing full well that he'd made most of it up himself, "and I've come to the conclusion that the normal methods, well, those just wouldn't do! Not in your case. So what the boys in the lab and I have done…" He opened the cupboard and pulled out a tiny syringe and a little jar. He jabbed the syringe into the jar's foil top and began filling it while he continued speaking. "Well, we've created what we think is the world's finest anti-depressant."

"It may have escaped your notice, but I'm not depressed," she said coldly.

He shook his head disapprovingly, flicking his eyes over her face before turning back to his work. "You've obviously been crying. Don't lie to me."

Sorrow almost snapped _I wasn't crying_ before she felt the tears on her face. "That's different," she said lamely, her anger derailed by the fact that she had been crying and hadn't noticed.

He raised the syringe, excitement bubbling up in his eyes. "You should be honored," he chirped merrily at her as he approached her arm. "You're the first person who has met my rather stringent requirements, and I've been looking for _ages_..."

She looked away from him, lips clenched tightly. She wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of watching her reaction to whatever he was he was doing. The needle pierced her skin and the new medication flowed silently into her system. She didn't see Teng back away from her, the syringe in his hand forgotten as he watched her with hungry eyes.

It was actually somewhat pleasant. Warmth tingled up and down her spine. Everything was blurring, wavering in and out of focus. She was starting to feel good. _Really_ good. Happy. Suddenly it all clicked back into sharpness and she smiled with relief. She even let out a little laugh…wait, she was still laughing…she couldn't stop! "Wh-wh-aahahahahahat the ahaha hell did you ahahahaha do to me? AHAHAHAHAHA!"

The doctor wasn't smiling, in fact he was frowning at her. "I suppose the formula still isn't quite right. Still, we'll try to do better next time, dear!"

Most of her mind was taken up with the absolute, unshakeable hilarity of the situation. The tiny bit of herself that was still normal, however, was strong enough to allow her to scream "I'll AHAHAHAHAHA kill you AHAHAHAHAHAAAAA you sick AHAHAHAHA twiAHAHAHAsted-"

"Flattery will get you nowhere, my little hyena. Come now, back to your cell." With that, he wheeled her out into the hallway and back to her cell. The cells passed in a tear-streaked blur of hilarity. A blue blob was ushering a green-and-grey blob that had to be Ivy down toward the cafeteria.

"AHAHAHAHelp meAHAHAHAHA!" she gasped out, tears of laughter rolling down her face. Ivy stared at her in shock, green face going pale.

"Get to breakfast, Pamela," snapped Dr. Teng.

(_to be continued_)

* * *

_Author's Note: You might have noticed that this story isn't tagged humor. There's a reason for it, as you've already seen. We'll get back to the wacky hijinks soon enough. _


	2. Plans in Motion

There was no way to measure time in Arkham but the sun. The windows were merely slits, heavily barred, but they were big enough to let in some light. 

The tiny squares of sunlight thrown down to the ground had slowly slid up onto the gurney, where Sorrow lay strapped down, teeth clenched tightly.

It_ hurt_. Her whole torso throbbed with the pain, her lungs afire with oxygen starvation. She'd been laughing for what felt like days but what was probably more like two hours. Tears had streamed down her face until a semicircle of wetness the size of a dinner plate soaked the front of her grey jumpsuit. (The floor was wet as well from the two occasions that she'd literally laughed herself sick, but she tried not to think about that.)

If this was her punishment for attacking another inmate, she vowed wholeheartedly never to even think of _touching_ anyone inside the building ever again. Ever. It hurt, and it was humiliating, and disgusting, and it was probably illegal in a variety of ways that no one would ever care about enough to investigate.

The laughter slowly faded down to a tolerable level. Sorrow took deep breaths when she could, filling her lungs with vomit-scented air as if it were rare perfume.

Someone was opening her door. She bit her lip, muffling the chuckles, and waited. Dr. Teng sauntered cheerfully into her cell, looking her over with a small smile on his face. She glared defiantly at him. "W-ahaha-well?" she asked. "Are we dahahaone?"

"Done?" he asked, amused.

"I'm sorry...that I tried...to...kill the Joker," she said, holding her breath to stifle the laughs. "You can let...me go."

"Dear, dear," he said, clicking his tongue at her like a benevolent adult chastising a toddler, "you don't seem to understand." He stepped closer, nostrils flaring at the scent of her vomit. He hurriedly stepped toward the other side of the gurney. "You are_ my_ patient, and as such I am responsible for your behavior." He slipped his hands gently into his lab coat pockets. "I could try so many methods on you. Skinnerian, Pavlovian...Watson's techniques might be a treat..."

Sorrow, having no idea what he was talking about, said "Or you could just try ahah-asking."

"My dear child, doctors do not _ask_ patients," he said, affronted. "And at any rate, using someone else's techniques seems so...so _common_. No, I prefer to blaze my own trail, so to speak..." He drew a syringe and a new foil-topped jar out of his pockets.

"Now wait a minute," Sorrow said firmly, biting back her rising fear. "There's no need to use that _stuff_ on me anymore. I won't hurt anyone else and I'll...I'll even _apologize _to him," she said, latching on to something to prove she'd learned her lesson.

"An apology with no sincerity means as much as an order without conviction," he said absently as he concentrated on filling the syringe.

"No!" Sorrow protested as he turned his eyes on her helpless, restrained arm. "You don't know what that stuff _does_ to me!"

"You're right," he mused happily, "which is why you're going to tell me all about it."

"Bullshit!" she screamed at him as he tapped her arm lightly, bringing a vein to the surface. Sorrow willed it to stay buried. "I won't tell you a thing and you can't make me, no matter how much of that stuff you stick me with!"

"Now that _is_ disappointing," he said, slipping the needle in. "I had hoped for your full cooperation. Fortunately, we don't need it," he smiled gently at her before dropping the syringe neatly back into his pocket.

She felt that insidious blurring of her focus and shrieked. "Stop! Stop it! What do you _want_?"

"Fame," he replied lightly. "Fortune. My name on a Nobel Prize." He cocked his head and watched the laughter overtake her, a tiny smile on his face. "Mmm. Perhaps a bit less ayahuasca next time..." He drew a notebook from his other pocket and jotted a complex code of numbers and letters on the second page, ignoring the epithets and curses his new test subject howled at him from between staccato bursts of laughter.

* * *

Bright. 

Too bright.

Daytime?

Morning.

Owwwwwwww...

First the lights, then the pain. It was getting to be a routine, a routine she dreaded and despised. The fluorescent lights would ping on precisely at seven AM, glaring whitely down through her closed eyelids. A few weeks ago, she'd been able to ignore them, roll over and go back to sleep.

A few weeks ago, she'd been able to do a lot of things. Recently, however, the insistent throbbing pains arcing from her abdomen to her temples made themselves known as soon as she was barely conscious, sending her fully awake with a gasp through tortured jaws.

Teng came in at eight, like all the other doctors, so she had an hour to try and pull herself together. She'd held on through four solid days of 'testing' somehow. It hurt so much...her abused muscles screamed at her as she shifted carefully beneath her straps.

He hadn't even unstrapped her. He hadn't bothered to consider that maybe spending days locked down in the same position made muscles cramp and joints ache. He'd only thought about the ease of injecting a totally helpless person. And the orderlies didn't seem to care. Hell, they were _happy_ about it! She'd even overheard one of them chuckling to his partner that he wished he could do the same to the entire rogue's gallery.

She scowled, winced as her face throbbed, and gently eased her expression back to neutrality. Time was passing. Think, think!

In desperate, fear-filled bouts of insomnia, she'd gone over her transgressions again and again. Had it been necessary to attack the Joker? Should she have been nicer to the orderlies? What if she'd just said 'good morning' to Teng once in a while, back before this whole ordeal had started? There had to be a reason he was killing her. There _had_ to. She never killed anyone without a reason, no one did...well, except maybe the Joker, but Teng was supposed to be _sane_, right?

She felt so weak. It was bad enough that the chemicals coursing through her bloodstream had pounded her torso with chuckles until she felt as if she was going to explode. She wasn't able to keep food down, so now they were feeding her via an IV, which really didn't help her feel any stronger. But now she was noticing her legs - or rather, the lack of feeling in them. She was horrified to realize she was actually relieved that they were going numb because that meant it was one less part of her to feel pain.

What the hell _was_ this stuff, anyway? She'd never heard of anything but Joker toxin having this effect, and Joker toxin was lethal. And besides, he'd proudly claimed it as his own invention, and something told her that he wouldn't demean himself by claiming credit for someone else's work...

A squeaky-wheeled cart piloted by an orderly chirped its way down the hallway. Oh, no, no, no...he'd be in soon, he always came soon after the cart...

Her eyes rolled frantically in her head, looking around the room for some means of escape. A shrill song of terror sang in the back of her mind, _oh god not again oh god not again..._

And here he was again, brandishing his syringe, smiling happily at her as she swallowed her screams. "Please," she begged, appalled at herself, "please don't, don't do it, can't it wait even for a day? An hour?" she pleaded, eyes locked to the sight of the syringe. "A few minutes? _Please_! It _hurts_!"

He flicked his eyes over her unwashed, reeking body, pausing to note the fresh tears rolling down her face. "You're crying," he accused lightly.

"Of course I'm crying! It _hurts_ and you're going to do it again!" she shrieked, sobbing openly now. "I'll give you anything you want, just _stop_!"

He smiled. "You don't have anything I need."

And the needle slipped under her skin once again.

* * *

Anyone who has not been in constant pain can never understand what it was like for Sorrow under Teng's care. If you have never woken up and prayed for death, if you have never spent an agonizing day waiting for time to roll onward so you can fall back into blissful, pain-free sleep, and if you are lucky enough to be thinking right now that constant pain can't be _that_ bad - you can never understand, and hopefully, you never will. 

It hurt. But to the naked eye, there seemed to be no _reason_ that she was hurting - there were no broken bones, no cuts...and she was being very closely watched over by her psychiatrist, who surely would have reported anything that was endangering her physical well-being. So when she pleaded with the orderlies to let her go, to stop Teng from hurting her, to _save_ her, they ignored her and went about their business.

Her feet were no longer strapped down to the bed. Whatever poisons he'd put into her nervous system had shut down her legs just below the knee. She could see her feet, but she couldn't move them. It was a whole new layer of hell. If she could only _move_, she could maybe wrench herself off of the bed or at least have the satisfaction of kicking Teng square in his smug little face.

_Move_, she thought furiously at her feet. _Move, dammit_! If this had been the movies, she _would_ have moved, and she could have let herself smugly smile in anticipation of the havoc she was going to wreak. But this wasn't the movies, and her feet stayed still.

To make it worse, she was totally alone within the walls of Arkham. No henchmen, no Sammy, no friends of any kind. She'd had one friendly exchange going - one! - and she'd managed to blow it. Any hope that Harley Quinn might have forgiven her was shattered when Harley, passing by, stuck her tongue out and raspberried her so hard that her cell window turned foggy.

The heavy lock on the door clanked open. _Oh god, _no,_ not again!_Twice a day for two full weeks now he'd sauntered into her life brimming with good cheer and a never-ending supply of different variations on his formula.

She pointedly ignored him as he strode in. Pleading hadn't helped. Screaming hadn't helped. Bribes, rants...he treated everything she said as beneath his notice. Why bother saying anything if he was just going to ignore it?

Despite her best efforts, she couldn't help shuddering as he injected a little syringe of that horrible yellowish liquid into her IV. "I saw that," he gloated in a sing-song as he took up his position at the foot of her bed. She was going to kill him. She was going to put his head on a pike and stab it through the Batsignal. A little smile cracked the corners of her mouth. She'd take his body and grind it into mincemeat and serve it to his bosses...The smile widened. She'd take his stethoscope and ram it so far down his throat that he could listen to his kidneys.

She was grinning like a...well, like a lunatic. But she wasn't laughing. Not much, at any rate, and certainly not with the fervor induced by his earlier concoctions. A string of weak chuckles haltingly gasped from her mouth.

Teng beamed at her. "Good! We're making excellent progress! And since you've been such a good girl, you can even go to the last few minutes of lunch!" Oh, she was going to kill him to _death_. He unstrapped her with a flourish and called an orderly in, instructing him to escort her to lunch and help her.

It was not a task that the orderly looked forward to. He'd been on the team that had unstrapped her here and there in the past few weeks, and when they'd eventually returned to pin her back down she'd fought like a demon. Well, she'd _tried,_ at any rate, but they'd been armed with a wide selection of tranquilizers handily loaded into darts. Helping her all by himself was not on his list of things he particularly wanted to do.

Still, a job was a job, so he loaded her into a spare wheelchair and gingerly took her down to the cafeteria. He parked her at the only empty table available - the smelly one in the corner - and left her alone to fetch a tray of food.

* * *

Ivy and Harley were sitting together again at the rogues' table in the middle of the room. Harley, noticing Ivy's eyes tracking something across the room, craned her head over her shoulder to see what was so interesting. Her eyes narrowed as she saw Sorrow seated limply at her little table. In one move, Harley scooped up a plastic spoon and a messy lump of mystery meat and aimed them catapult-style at her. 

Ivy plucked it from her fingers and dropped it on the table. "You never let me have any fun," Harley sulked.

"Something's wrong," Ivy said, still staring at Sorrow. "She's in a wheelchair."

"Serves her right," Harley sniffed, surreptitiously trying to regather her armaments.

Ivy knocked them from her hand again. "Why is she in a wheelchair? She was fine a few weeks ago."

"Who cares?" Harley shrugged. "She tried to hurt my Puddin'. She deserves it." Ivy slowly shuffled the scraps of paper out of her jumpsuit. "Whatcha got, Red?"

"She was drawing this that day," Ivy said, nudging the last piece into place.

Harley stared at it. "But...that's me and Mistah J. Why'd he rip it up?"

From long experience, Ivy knew better than to try and interpret anything the Joker did. It was better to just state what had happened and let Harley draw her own conclusions. They'd nearly always be the same - that the Joker was infallibly perfect - but at least it saved her some frustration at being ignored. "All I know is that she said it was for you."

Harley looked down at the little beaming Harley on the page, dressed in her spandex costume. The Joker had managed to neatly sever her head when he'd torn the paper.

Sorrow had her forehead planted firmly on the table now, her arms loosely crumpled on the arms of the dull brown chair. Everyone fell apart on their first trip to Arkham, but it wasn't normally this..._spectacular_ of a meltdown. Ivy got to her feet. "I'm going to go over there. Are you coming?" she asked.

The little scribbly Joker beamed at her from the page. "Well…all right, Red. I guess we could go say hi." She promised herself virtuously that she was only going over there so that she could tell her Puddin' later about just how miserable Sorrow was after she dared to attack him.

Ivy and Harley approached Sorrow's table, holding their trays in front of them. Sorrow didn't move as they settled down near her. Ivy's curiosity, already in middle gear, kicked into high as she took a closer look at Sorrow. Her long red hair lay in matted clumps on the table, exposing a thin, pale neck under a sweat-stained jumpsuit. Ivy unconsciously wound a lock of her own red hair around her fingers. "Sorrow?" she asked.

"Go a...ahahaha...away," Sorrow's voice came from the barricade of arms and hair.

Ivy nudged Harley hard in the ribs. "Hiya," Harley grunted obediently, paying more attention to her food than her companions.

Sorrow's head flew upward. Ivy reflexively twitched backward at the sight of the grin twisting the lower half of Sorrow's face. She wasn't used to seeing that expression on anyone but the occasional Joker victim. "Hahahaharley?"

"What?" Harley asked, gingerly peeling her orange with the air of one that expects a spray of citric acid in the eyes.

"I'm sorr...aha...sorry," Sorrow muttered.

It was then that the orderly returned with a tray of re-heated food. He paused, eyeing the small table which was suddenly a lot more dangerous than he anticipated. Then, with a look on his face that clearly stated that he was taking his life in his hands and he knew it, he slid into the seat near Sorrow and plonked the tray down in front of her.

She returned it to him, shoving it with the back of her hand. "Hey," he protested. "You're supposed to eat this!"

"S...aha...screw you," Sorrow snapped. "I wouldn't feed tha..ahahaha...that_ slop_ to a _pig_."

"Well, we'll just see what your doctor has to say about that," the orderly remarked, getting back to his feet.

In an instant, she went from bristling to cringing. "Sahahaorry, sorry," she muttered, grabbing the bread roll and jamming it in her mouth. The orderly, with a smirk on his face, disappeared. When he had gone, Sorrow slid the tray back into his vacated spot and dropped the roll like a dead rat on top of it.

In the time it had taken for that little confrontation, Ivy had been watching with a gossip-hound's eye for news. Sorrow's sleeves had been rolled up to reveal a spray of needle holes on the inside of her elbows. She looked exhausted, and she sounded angry, but she still wore that increasingly disturbing smile..."What happened to you?" Ivy asked.

"Teng," Sorrow said shortly, biting back chuckles. "Teng and his new med...medaha...medahahahaha..._medication_," she spat violently.

It didn't look like a _new_ medication to Ivy. "What's he giving you?"

"I don't ahahaha know! You think he tells me a-hahaha-nything? The rahahahahrat bastard…" She bit her lip hard, trying to muffle the laughter.

"Well, at least he put a smile on yer face!" said Harley, looking up from her meal.

"Can it, Harl," snapped Ivy. "He's sick if he thinks this is helping her."

"Lunch is over, folks! Move it to the rec room or back to your cells!" The lunchroom attendant folded his arms and glared at the few people still inside the room. Harley bounced up out of the chair. "C'mon, Red! Let's go!"

"In a minute, Harl. Has he stopped doing this?"

"N-no ahahahaha! He's kill-ahahaha-killing-ahahahahaha m-m-meahahaha!" Sorrow looked at Ivy with tears of laughter running down her face. "Hahahahahahelp me!"

Ivy eyed her speculatively, then moved away with Harley. As they reached the door, Harley turned and glanced back at Sorrow. She was slumped back to the table again, elbows resting on the tabletop and hands firmly clamped over her mouth.

Well, she had apologized...hadn't she? And she looked pretty bad...Harley skipped backward and scampered back to Sorrow.

"I just wanted to say that, well, Red told me 'bout the picture, and why ya slapped Mistah J, and, well, friends?" Harley held out a hand.

Sorrow looked at it and nodded. "Fahahahaha friends." She held up a hand, the little ends of chain on her new gloves jingling merrily, and mimed shaking.

* * *

"This is disgusting!" Ivy raved, pacing back and forth. 

A casual observer may have thought that Ivy was upset about the treatment of a fellow rogue. Perhaps, they might assume, she was angry that a doctor, a man in a position of trust, would break and abuse someone to the very limits of their sanity.

Actually, Ivy was simply scared to death that she was next. Sorrow was poisonous, Ivy was poisonous - how long would it be before she found herself strung out in some chemical hell? Even if toxins didn't work on her, they sure as hell could take away her powers - and _then_ where would she be?

Not to mention, of course, that she _liked_ her powers. If some lunatic doctor stole them away from her, she could no longer do nearly anything she'd grown accustomed to doing. Corporations would go unpunished. Plants would go unsaved. (Oh, and she'd probably live out the rest of her days waiting for the hundreds of people she'd pissed off to show up at her door demanding payback for what she'd done.) No, this had to be stopped, and it had to be stopped _now_ before anyone got the bright idea to try it on _her_.

"Yeah, but what're we gonna do about it?" asked Harley, from her upside-down perch on the couch.

Ivy paused, mid-rant, to consider it. She hadn't thought of that. Well, the first option that sprung to mind was probably the best one. "We're going to get her out."

"But Red, I'm supposta be out in a month anyway!" Harley kicked her feet to try and turn herself around. Her left foot barely missed kicking the Riddler in the head. He didn't notice (or if he did, he didn't care enough to move out of the way).

Ivy rolled her eyes. "Like that's ever stopped you before."

"Hey, I had good reasons last time!" Harley protested, wriggling upright.

"You wanted me to break you out to watch the Oscars," Ivy reminded her.

"Well..." Harley muttered something inaudible about seeing "that hot guy".

Ivy let it go. "You've still got your key, right?"

"What key?" Harley asked innocently. _Too_ innocently.

"You gave it to the Joker, didn't you," Ivy asked flatly.

"Well, he _asked_ for it," Harley said reasonably.

"How are we supposed to get out of here without that key?" Ivy hissed.

"Ah, a question I can answer." The Riddler closed his puzzle book and grinned charmingly at Ivy.

"Not now, Nygma."

"You need a key, I have a lockpick," he said cheerfully. "You're escaping - I want in."

If it had been solely up to Ivy, she probably would have said no. She didn't need to accept anyone's help, particularly a man's help, particularly _this_ man's help. But Harley jumped in and said "Sure thing, Eddie!"

Ivy sighed. Harley was a rarity among the rogues: cheerful where they were sullen, obvious where they were subtle, and guided largely by the principle that everyone on her side of the law was her friend until they proved otherwise. And that was all well and good, particularly since it was the entire reason that the two of them had ended up being friends. But...well...did she have to be friendly with _everybody_?

Oh well. They'd use him to get out and then...well, the guards were always _very_ eager to catch the escaping rogues. Maybe Ivy would give them a little help...

(_to be continued_)

* * *

_Author's Note: Why yes, Sorrow and I have shared some life experiences. Yuck. And yes, Ivy has had her powers stolen from her (in Batman: Gotham Knights 64-65) - by Bruce Wayne, for some reason. And then Hush gave them back and kind of killed her. Like everything else in the Batverse, it's complicated. And the 'kill you to death' line is straight out of DC. Oh, and while we're on the topic of research, I received a few comments about the last chapter that I wanted to address publicly. _

_The concept of the Joker feeling sadness/regret is canon. Oh, yes, indeedy. It's in the Batman:Gotham Knights story arc that kicks off with issue #50. He's down in his secret airtight basement handling a photo album with gloved hands - a photo album full of pictures of him pre-Jokerization and Jeannie, his deceased wife - and he looks like he's about to burst into tears at any second. Even in the Killing Joke, he's thinking about Jeannie and being sad. (Also, at the end of Catwoman #65, he does a great Darth Vader angsty 'Noooooo!' at the thought of Batsy being dead. Come to think of it, he gets sad in Batman:TAS - The Man Who Killed Batman - for exactly the same reason. He even _cries_. And if Paul Dini's wrong, I don't want to be right.) _

_The Joker's not going to get sad at the thought of offing strangers. Hell, we all know that he _loves _ that. 'I'd like to report a hit-and-run, corner of Market and Broom?' WHAM! 'Make that Market and Boyle.' (Detective Comics #826). And I'm certainly not arguing that he feels sad about anything that's happened after he became the Joker (unless we're in yet another 'Batman's dead' situation). We just don't see him cry on a regular basis because his one sad memory is mostly unknown to the world at large, and all that homicide works wonderfully to distract him from thinking about it. _

_Sorrow's powers work on anyone with the capability for sadness (excluding androids with emotion chips and the like) and so, yes, her powers work on the Joker. It's complicated and I'm not a chemist, but I base it on the assumption that if anesthetics can work on the Joker (Batman #663) then so can her powers. Why would her powers work if fear toxin didn't? Well, why would anesthetic work if fear toxin didn't? Why would any of the psychoactive drugs they cram down his throat have any effect? Why, in the JLU episode 'Wild Cards', could Ace drive the Joker even _more_ insane if Spectre and J'onn couldn't even touch him? Canon, in this case, is inconsistent and varies wildly depending on who's writing it._

_I'm talkative in research mode, aren't I? And anyway, at least she didn't kill off twelve of his henchmen and send the Joker wandering black-eyed, bleeding, broken and naked through the fields on the outskirts of Gotham via the sewers (Batman:Gotham Knights #55). Now_there's_ some pwnage!_


	3. Sayonara

The rogues of Gotham tend not to think things through. Oh, they're brilliant at planning their next adventure, be it a heist or a campaign to ruin Gotham, but they never quite seem to extend their plans beyond the anticipated success of each project. It's all well and good to spike the water supply with fear toxin, or to plant tiny mind-control chips in cell phones, but no one ever seems to plan for the next step. What would happen to a physically unimpressive man like Jonathan Crane in a Gotham ripped apart by fear? What fun would be left to the Joker if he succeeded in killing the Batman? Kill the mayor? There'll be another one along in a week or two. None of these grand plans have any kind of long-term benefits, which is logical given that they tended to originate in minds were sanity is optional.

The Riddler was one of the few who did think ahead. Some might argue that he didn't think things through _enough_, considering that nine times out of ten he ended up on the wrong end of a pummeling, but that was a rather unfair accusation. He was very good indeed at manipulating situations to his advantage if he could only talk his way through them. His talents simply didn't apply in Bat-encounters, since you cannot hold a debate with the boot on your face. 

You can, however, debate with your peers as you stealthily sneak them out of their cells. This was the situation in which the Riddler found himself on that late Friday night, with his carefully reshaped bedspring wiggling quietly in the lock of Harley Quinn's cell.

"Hurry up," Poison Ivy hissed.

"I'm working on it," he muttered.

"Work faster."

As a motivational speaker, Ivy was about as talented as a patch of mud. "Almost..." he said, wincing as his pick squeaked loudly against the innards of the lock.

Harley, pressed up hard against the window to try and watch Eddie at work, chirped "Hurry up, Eddie, y'got two more cells to open yet!"

"Two?" Eddie muttered.

"Well, we gotta get Mistah J too, right?" 

"No," Ivy said flatly.

"But Red-"

"I said no!" Eddie stopped picking the lock, twitching his head from side to side to look for guards as Ivy's words echoed down the long, dark hallway. "We're getting Sorrow out. If we let _him_ out too, they'll try to kill each other."

"So we don't let her out," Harley chirped, pleased to have found a solution.

"We're breaking out _because_ of her, Harley," Ivy said, rubbing her forehead with one hand. "Remember?"

"If you're not breakin' out Mistah J too, then I'm not comin'," Harley huffed, folding her arms defiantly. 

Eddie popped the pick out and stood up. "Fine by me. Where's Sorrow's cell?"

"Down that way," Ivy pointed.

"Hey!" Harley protested as they began to move away. "What about me?"

"You said you weren't coming," Ivy pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but..." She sighed. "We really can't let him out?"

"We don't have time, he hates Sorrow, he's not particularly fond of either of us, and the last time you two broke out he threw you to the guards so he could get away." There was a distant clanging noise. "Look," Ivy finished, "we don't have time for this. Are you coming?"

"Yeah, I'm coming," Harley grumbled. "I guess we can come back for him later."

Eddie bent back to the lock. _Sure we can_, he thought, sarcasm dripping off his thought like water from rained-on patio furniture. The lock clanked open. 

"Come on," Ivy hissed, yanking at Harley's arm as she looked longingly down the hall toward the cell that housed the Joker. 

"Don't see why we're takin' Eddie and not Puddin'," Harley groused.

"Nygma has his uses," Ivy said absently.

Eddie, trailing behind them, grimaced. Oh, yes, he had his uses all right. He was certain that, after his lock-picking skills, his usefulness as a stooge to be thrown at the guards was next on her list. Well, he'd had that trick played on him before, and _this_ time, he knew how to keep it from happening...

* * *

Sorrow stared tiredly at the ceiling, running her eyes over the shadow-obscured bumps and scratches as she'd done so many times in the last two weeks. She'd been asleep, dreaming fitful dreams of terror, when she'd awoken with a gasp to find a shining white figure by her bedside.

As the nightmares wore off, she realized it was just the night nurse coming to change her IV. She hated him. It wasn't that he was mean, or thoughtless - it was merely that he punctuated every sentence with a chuckle or a grin, and she'd heard enough laughter in the past two weeks to last for the rest of her lifetime. He leaned over her, grinning, trying to urge her to join in whatever joke currently amused him. It was as if he'd killed a puppy in front of her and asked her to pet its corpse. 

Eventually, thankfully, he left.

Now she was alone again, alone in the little squares of moonlight shining down from the window. Teng had decided that he knew exactly what to do to make his serum perfect, and so he'd cheerfully skipped down just before leaving that night to try out the new version on her. It had failed, spectacularly, and she'd almost broken her restrained wrists when the spasm of laughter hurled her forward into a tightly-curled ball of pain on the bed. 

She opened her mouth to see if the laughter was gone. "The rain in Spain falls mahahainly on the plaihahahain." Yes, it almost disappeared. "Doctor Tahahahaeng is a filthy bahahastard." 

Tears of self-pity began rising over the bottom half of her vision, blurring out the world in a comforting salty haze. Was this how it was going to end? Was she going to die here, strapped to a lonely little cot while the world went on without her? If it was, why didn't it just happen now? What was the point of waiting to die when death could be had so easily? She didn't know if there was an afterlife, but anything had to be better than this. Tears washed down her face and puddled on her collarbones. 

Shadows in the hallway! The first thought that wailed into her mind was that it was Teng, come back to try again, and she bit her lip hard against the sobbing scream that threatened to tear her throat open. 

The door grated open. She hunched defensively in her spot, hiding behind closed eyelids as she heard soft footsteps approach her.

_Soft_ footsteps? Guards had loud shoes, and Teng walked like he was killing ants with every step. She cracked open one eyelid and was absolutely stunned to see Poison Ivy and Edward Nygma freeing her from her restraints. Nygma flicked the IV needle out of her arm with a deft hand.

"Ready to go?" Ivy asked softly as she eased the strap from its buckle.

Absolute ecstasy fizzed in her blood. Escape! "Yes! But I can't…walk," she said, biting down on the laughter that threatened to erupt. 

"We know," Nygma said, crouching by her side. "Hop on." Sorrow wrapped eager arms around his neck and did her best to help as he fumbled his way upright with Sorrow clinging to his back like the shell on a hermit crab. For some reason, Ivy was shooting him a dirty look. "Ready to go, Pam?" he asked innocently. 

Ivy sighed and held the door for them. He was so thin...Sorrow tried to think light thoughts as he staggered down the hallway with her on his back. Ivy took the lead, parading them down silent halls. She waved a hand at Eddie to stay back as they rounded the next corner. 

A guard's voice rang out. "Hey, you can't - _mmmmff_ - oh, wow..." A green hand beckoned them to follow. Eddie chuckled as they sidestepped a starry-eyed guard, splayed on the ground. Another guard, passed out on the floor around the next corner, indicated that Harley Quinn had been there before them. Four kisses later, they arrived at the storage room. Ivy ducked inside and emerged with her arms full of costumes and Eddie's hat perched rakishly on her head. 

The lobby was empty, save for the receptionist, who was limply sprawled over his desk. Someone had taken the time to draw a big red smile on his face with a handy Sharpie. "Almost out!" Edward muttered as they stepped onto the lawn of the Asylum. "Now where's-"

His question was cut off by the arrival of a car screeching in. The windows rolled down and a familiar blonde head stuck out. "C'mon, Red! Let's go!" 

Ivy stuffed the costumes in through the window and opened the back door. Eddie wrestled himself and Sorrow inside, somehow managing not to ever get between Sorrow and the car door. Ivy sighed with the distinct flavor of a plan gone awry as he settled himself next to Sorrow. She slammed the door and hopped into the front seat. The car roared into life and screeched away from the asylum.

"Sorrow? You okay back there?" asked Ivy, turning in her seat.

Sorrow was somehow managing to bawl and to laugh hysterically at the same time. "Thank you, thank you," were the only words anyone could make out.

Edward, unused to dealing with this level of emotion in anyone, uncertainly patted her on the knee. "It's going to be all right."

* * *

They arrived at one of Ivy's lesser hideouts by dawn. Edward carried Sorrow inside and laid her down in one of the bedrooms, where she instantly fell asleep. The other three walked to the lab and took seats at the table. 

"So what now?" asked Harley, poking one of Ivy's beakers that was covered in dust. 

Ah. Ivy hadn't really thought about that. Well, someone had to watch Sorrow until she could walk again, or at least until she got a henchman to take her home. Ivy rescued the beaker from Harley before she nudged it off the countertop and said "One of us should be in there when she wakes up." 

"I'll do it!" Harley volunteered. 

Ivy regarded her suspiciously. "Why?"

"Well, who's the shrink around here?" Harley pointed out. When no one answered, she folded her arms. "Me."

"Yesterday you wanted to throw salisbury steak at her."

Harley rolled her eyes. "That was _yesterday_, Red. An' anyway, she said she was sorry about...y'know. Puddin'."

"Go on, then," Ivy said. Harley grinned and scampered off.

"You trust her?" Eddie asked disbelievingly.

"Yes." Ivy ran a finger down a glass tube, clearing a strip of dust away. "She doesn't hold grudges."

"Yeah, right," Eddie snorted. He'd seen Harley in vendetta mode. It wasn't pretty.

"If she tried to kill everyone who ever tried to hurt the Joker, she'd never sleep again," Ivy commented. "And besides, I'd be at the top of the list. Sorrow apologized, so she'll be fine." She flicked a dust bunny from the end of the tube. "You're going home, then?" she asked lightly.

"Well, yes," he said. "I mean, I've got things to do, and you've got Harley to help you..." _And Harley's already said that she's going back to Arkham to break out the Joker_. "Unless you want me to lend a hand," he offered carefully. 

She casually adjusted her glassware. "If you feel like helping, you can," she said. 

"Then...I will," he agreed cautiously. He'd had a few rather violent encounters with Ivy in the past. Getting back into her good graces was an excellent idea, particularly if it meant that he didn't have to try and make it back home tonight - and she obviously wanted his help, even though she'd probably rather die than ask for it. 

"There's a room down the hall that you can stay in," Ivy said, dismissing him with a wave of her hand. "Across from Sorrow."

Eddie got up, the thought of sleeping in a soft bed dancing across his thoughts, and left the room.

* * *

The next day, Sorrow woke up screaming. She felt hands on her forearms, heard a voice calling her name, and opened her eyes to see not Dr. Teng, but Ivy.

She relaxed immediately, and Ivy released her arms. "I…I'm sorry," she said, rolling over to face the wall. "I didn't mean to-"

"Hey, it's okay," said Harley, who had been standing frozen by the mirror holding a jar of white greasepaint. "Lots of us have bad dreams about Arkham." She went back to smearing the paint over her face, covering up the last bit of color with a satisfied "There."

The outfits finally registered with Sorrow. Harley was standing there in her spandex, and Ivy was in her leotard, and there was no way they'd be in them if they were still at Arkham. "You mean, the escape…that was real?"

Ivy nodded, settling down on the bed next to Sorrow and leaning on one arm. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she cried, springing out of the covers and hugging Ivy as hard as she could. 

"Better let her breathe," Harley giggled as Ivy looked imploringly in her direction. Harley walked over and patted Sorrow's shoulder. "C'mon - _oof_!" Sorrow transferred the mighty bearhug to Harley. "Thank you _so much_!" she gushed, disengaging. "Oh, and...where's Edward?"

"He's sleeping," said Ivy, amused, "but you can thank him later."

Sorrow smiled, a little embarrassed at her outburst of affection, and tucked a stray tendril of hair back behind her ear. The rough glove on her hand scraped against her cheek and she reflexively twitched away from it. 

"What's the deal with those gloves, anyway?" Harley asked as she flopped down on the bed. "You act like they're poison."

"They're...they're like the gloves I used to wear," Sorrow muttered.

"When?"

"When I was little." She tucked her hands behind a pillow. "I don't want to talk about it."

"So what'd Teng do to ya?"

Sorrow shuddered. "I don't want to talk about that either."

Harley rolled her eyes. "Doncha wanna talk about anything?"

The quiet of the room was broken by a rumble from Sorrow's stomach. "Breakfast." 

"I'm hungry too. What about you, Red?"

Ivy shrugged. "Breakfast it is. We'll be back when it's ready." Ivy and Harley left the room, making their way toward the lab/kitchen area.

Edward was already up and dressed in his green suit, although he'd left the mask behind. "Good morning, ladies," he smiled. 

"Mornin', Eddie!" Harley beamed. She took a seat at the table next to him as Ivy started making breakfast. 

"How's Sorrow doing?"

"God, Eddie, she's a wreck. That Doctor Teng ought to be put to sleep," Ivy growled as she measured out some flour. "She had one hell of a nightmare last night."

"Don't we all," murmured the Riddler, toying with his cup.

"She woke up screamin', Eddie," said Harley. "Resultin' from extreme trauma. Y'know anythin' about gettin' handcuffs off?"

* * *

They'd been at Ivy's place for two days. Edward had made a furtive trip to the store, purchasing the necessities, and so far they hadn't gotten caught. 

So far. When Eddie returned, he told them all that the cops were watching most of their old hideouts-the amusement park, the greenhouses, the toy stores. It would be safest to keep hiding at Ivy's for a while until the heat was off. 

Ivy's place was a haven of beauty. Plants bloomed in corners and dangled from the ceiling, with jewel-toned flowers winking from nests of green vines and leaves. All the beautiful plant life had one major problem, though: it littered the floor with a maze of greenery that it was almost impossible not to step on. 

Sorrow had it a little harder than the others. At least they could walk. She was reduced to crawling on the ground like an infant, dragging her useless feet behind her. But still, at least she was able to do that!...as she reminded herself every half-hour or so, trying hard to shore up what was left of her optimism about ever walking again.

Currently, she was sitting at the dinner table, pushing a bit of chicken listlessly around her plate. She'd half expected Ivy to be a vegetarian - but then she realized that no, that was ridiculous. Ivy loved plants too much to be a vegetarian. It would be like a member of PETA living solely off of steak. 

Her euphoria at the escape had burned away. She was free of Dr. Teng!...at the moment. Her muscles felt better!...though they still ached furiously and twinged whenever she moved. She was alive!...provided that that was a good thing.

Chronic pain leaves a mark. Chronic pain inflicted by others leaves all sorts of nasty residue behind. The tortured wonder - why did he pick _me_? What did I do to deserve this? And deep in their minds, they slowly convince themselves that it all _has_ to be their fault, somehow, because they _had_ to do something to single themselves out for punishment. It is nearly impossible to interpret torture as anything but a very personal attack - because, from the tortured's perspective, it is the most personal of attacks - and the aftermath of physical torture is nearly always a broken mind. 

Sorrow, wrapped in her blue coat, hunched in on herself like a wounded bird, watched her hand in its hateful glove handling the fork. The others had tried to get the gloves off, in a limited kind of way. There wasn't really much that they could do. Teng had filled the locks with glue, freezing the mechanisms solid and making the cuffs unpickable. And of the limited equipment that Ivy kept around, nothing could cut the cuffs off without also cutting Sorrow. 

She wasn't hungry. Why was she bothering to pretend like she was? Why was she sitting here like a silent lump, intruding on the conversation and dampening their fun? Wouldn't it be better for everyone if she just went in her room and never came back out again? 

She wanted to silently slip away without attracting anyone's notice, but that was impossible now. Instead, she slowly eased herself to the floor and began to crawl away. 

"...an' then he said - Hey, where ya goin'?" Harley interrupted herself to ask Sorrow.

Sorrow shrugged, an interesting maneuver on all fours. "Doesn't matter."

Harley had spent many years of her life studying the human mind. Okay, so maybe she hadn't been the best in the world at it, but she'd been good enough to land herself a job at Arkham - and skills like that never really went away. Right now, her psychiatrist senses were telling her that letting Sorrow go might turn out to be a dangerous option.

"You've gotta be goin' somewhere."

"My room."

Harley glanced at her plate. "But ya didn't even eat yer dinner!"

"Not hungry."

Harley shook her head. "You haven't eaten anything all day," she pointed out.

"Doesn't matter." Sorrow started crawling away again. 

Harley sighed. Sorrow had been a lot of fun before this whole business started. She'd joked around with her, and played silly little pencil-and-paper games - something Red wouldn't lower herself to do - and Harley wanted that Sorrow back. She got up from the table and sat herself directly in Sorrow's path. Sorrow stopped crawling, startled at the sudden intrusion. "Kid, you gotta lighten up," Harley directed. "He hurt you, yeah, but you're out of there now. You can't let it get to ya."

Sorrow sat down. "How am I supposed to _lighten up_," she spat, "when he's going to kill me when they catch me again?"

"Who says they'll catch ya again?"

Sorrow glared at Harley, gesturing at her limp calves. "These do. Or did you have some kind of cunning plan for me to get away that _didn't_ involve me running?"

"You can't think like that!" Harley snapped. "Look, you gotta live for the now, okay? If you spend all your time worryin' about the future you'll never get anything done!"

"How am I supposed to get anything done like this?" Sorrow screeched. "He _ruined_ me!" 

"You've got a problem, work around it," Harley advised. "Look at Matt, or Victor, or -"

"So I should rename myself then? The Legless Wonder?" Sorrow sneered. "Oh, yeah, that'll look _great_ in the papers."

"Aw, who says you'll be like that forever? When's the last time you tried to move 'em, huh?"

"Fine," Sorrow growled with fury and glared at her stupid, useless legs, willing them to move.

And her foot twitched.

"...so ya gotta-" Harley was saying.

"Shut up," Sorrow snapped. She cautiously tried again. Her foot twitched, almost invisibly. She still couldn't feel it, but...she could _move_..."Look," she ordered, joy sizzling up her spine. 

Twitch. "You moved!" Harley said smugly.

Sorrow grinned like an idiot and twitched her foot again. "You _knew_," she accused.

"I had a feeling," Harley corrected happily. "Now can we go eat dinner?"

Sorrow twitched her foot a few more times for luck. "Okay."

There was a sharp _crack_, followed by a series of _thwipthwipthwip_ as black bolas spun out of the air from the shadowed hallway. They spun around Ivy and Eddie, locking them to their chairs, and one wrapped tightly around Harley and Sorrow, pinioning them together on the floor. Robin, with a happy little grin of triumph on his face, stepped out of the shadows. "Mind if I join you?"

Robin meant Batman meant going back to Arkham meant going back to Teng.

Sorrow snapped.

"Don't let him take me, don't let him take me, not Arkham, not back to Arkham, no no no, don't, don't let him don't let him," begged Sorrow continuously, hysterically, clutching at Harley tighter and tighter.

* * *

Robin approached the trapped rogues, curiosity sparking in his mind. Was this screaming, sobbing hysteric on the floor the same person that had managed to trap the Batman? Sorrow shrieked a piercing note of absolute terror at his approach and thrashed, desperately trying to break free from the ropes. 

Harley grunted as Sorrow's elbow made contact with her midriff. "Get lost, bat-breath," she muttered, trying to capture Sorrow's flailing limbs with her own. 

"You can't take us back to Arkham!" Ivy ordered.

"Oh, really?" 

"Not unless you want her to die," Eddie explained, nodding his head toward the writhing mess that was Sorrow on the floor. 

"You'll kill her if I take you back?" Robin shook his head. "Can't you think of a better threat than that?"

"Not us, bird-brain!" Ivy snapped. "Her doctor. She's half-dead already!"

Robin looked the scene over carefully. It did seem strange…the Riddler, Ivy and Harley breaking out together with a relative newcomer to the costumed world. "Hold on a second." He flipped on his little Bat-communicator. "Batman?"

"Yeah?"

"I've got the Riddler, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, and the other one-"

"Her name's Sorrow, bird-boy," Harley called out angrily.

"-and Sorrow tied up in Ivy's old place, but I think you better come take a look."

"Be there in one minute."

Robin walked over to the window and opened it wide, casting a light onto the lawn. Taking his time, he walked back over to the group and leaned against a nearby wall, trying to act casually - at least, as casually as one could act when a girl was having hysterics on the floor and you were on the receiving end of three death-glares. 

A vine slowly snaked its way into the kitchen. Robin noticed. "Pull it back, Ivy," he warned, opening his hand to show a little canister of herbicide. Ivy, with a look on her face that suggested sour lemonade, sent the vine rustling back down the hallway. 

Finally Batman swung in through the window, almost landing on Sorrow and Harley. Sorrow let out an ungodly shriek of fear and began openly sobbing. Harley shifted herself beneath the ropes as much as she could and turned the girl away from the Bat, glaring at both of the caped crusaders. 

"What's the trouble, Robin?"

"The trouble, Bat-boy, is that if you send Sorrow back to Arkham she'll die!" snapped Ivy, overriding Robin. Batman leaned in for a closer look at Sorrow. She screamed again, fighting to get away from him. 

"Do you _mind?_"snapped Harley, holding her as best she could. "Go _away,_ Bats!" 

Batman, puzzled, stalked over to the table and stood between the two rogues tied up in their chairs. "Why-"

"She's been _tortured,_ Batman, as we explained to your pet bird," said Edward. "She's not exactly thrilled with the prospect of going back and getting a second helping, especially now that she knows it'll be worse since she escaped."

Robin and Batman exchanged a glance. Torture at Arkham wasn't exactly new - there had been a host of other staff members with the idea that brute physical pain was the only way to keep the inmates of Arkham in line - but it was definitely not something that they were going to allow to continue. 

Of course, this meant that they couldn't just drop the foursome off at Arkham, nor the police station, since any rogue at a police station was automatically assumed to be en route to Arkham. No, they'd have to keep them somewhere safe, somewhere private...

Fortunately, they had a plan for just such an occasion. "Project Liberty," Batman ordered. Robin nodded and disappeared as Batman placed a hand to his bat-ear, activating the police radio link wired inside his cowl. "Gordon?"

* * *

Running Arkham Asylum is not a job for the fainthearted. It required so much intensive work that vacations were almost unheard of. Without an administrator's firm hand, the asylum would disintegrate into a puddle of corruption and vice. 

Some would argue that that had already happened during the last incumbent's reign. He'd gone on sabbatical one year ago and had never returned, leaving his successor, Dr. Patrick Carlson, to fight the bureaucracy into some kind of order on his own without any kind of guidance - not even a stack of notes or a note of goodwill from his predecessor.

Dr. Carlson had never intended to take the position permanently. And now, thirteen months into it, he was fearing that his 'temporary' position was going to be his occupation for the rest of his life. The staff chased him through his dreams, demanding more and more money. Avalanches of loose cash buried them to their waists and still they demanded more, more, until he had no more to give - and then a sea of unpaid bills crashed down upon him like a collapsing building. Inmates jeered and giggled at him from the corners of the dream, racing through with unfastened restraints and foamy lips, staring evilly at him from the shadows where they lurked to take revenge...

It was generally at this point that he gasped awake, sweating and shaking. Unfortunately for him, when he jerked awake on this night, there were a pair of glaring eyes floating in the corner, burning into his startled consciousness like a branding iron. 

He smacked the light on. The eyes were revealed to belong to the Batman instead of a drooling lunatic. This could hardly be said to be an improvement. It wasn't the first time that he'd had a late-night visit from a vigilante, but he had devoutly hoped that the trend wouldn't continue. "W-what are you doing here?" he asked, fright making his voice quaver. He noticed it and stomped the hell out of it. "What could you possibly want with me _now_?" he demanded, sitting up in the midst of his tangled sheets. 

"I have a few questions about your policies."

"You want to discuss asylum policy at..." he glanced at the clock. "At four in the morning! What on earth prompted this?"

"You hired Reginald Teng three months ago," the Batman said coldly. "Why?"

"He came highly recommended," Carlson said, furrowing his brow with the effort of recalling the last round of interviews. "It's not often that you find a doctor who's that knowledgeable about biochemistry _and_ psychiatric methods." Suspicion narrowed his eyes. "What happened?"

"What do _you_ think happened?"

Carlson swore under his breath. "It's his new tranquilizer, isn't it?"

"Tranquilizer?" the Batman asked flatly.

"He invented a...look, he...he told me that he'd had some success with a certain blend of tranquilizers at his previous position. I know it's not exactly legal, but he was only trying to _help_ that girl!" Carlson sputtered. "She can't control her behavior, even enough to notice that she's doing herself serious damage. Her psychosis is killing her!"

"No," Batman refuted. "Her _psychiatrist_ is." He pulled a rubber-banded folder from beneath his cape and tossed it to the doctor. Carlson ripped it open and scanned the pages. They were lab notes, printed in Teng's own handwriting...but the formula didn't match any tranquilizer he'd ever heard of. In fact, it looked like a stimulant...

Nasty suspicions crystallized in his mind. "He lied to me, didn't he," Carlson muttered angrily, paging through the file. "He told me he was _helping_ her...where did these files come from?" he demanded, looking up to confront the Bat.

But he had gone. Carlson sighed and returned to the file - a file inside a folder marked "Property of Arkham Asylum Pharmacy". Batman's purpose in bringing _him_ the file was obvious. Batman's open involvement in this particular case could hinder it far more than it helped. It was all right, from a legal standpoint, if the Batman assisted in taking down known criminals - gangsters and the like with outstanding warrants - because there was already evidence against them, and merely delivering them to the police didn't infringe on their rights (too much, anyway). In taking down a new criminal, Batman's involvement often made it far too easy for the criminal to cry 'Mistrial!'...unless, of course, the criminal also happened to be completely insane. Mistrials were not an option if you were a psychiatric prisoner. How fortunate for the Batman that he had a city full of psychotics and a handy storage place for them...

Carlson shook his head. Enough woolgathering. Teng had lied to him and administered unapproved medication to one of his charges. That was evidence enough for him to act upon. He swung himself out of bed, adjusted his flannel pajamas, and padded off to start his day a few hours earlier than he would have liked.

* * *

Monday morning at Arkham Asylum was traditionally terrible. Weekends for the inmates meant no wasting time at therapy sessions, no official visits from government officials that stared at them like zoo animals, and a little looser restrictions with the less-watchful weekend workers. On Mondays, the entire building seemed to sigh with the prospect of another dreary week locked inside its walls. 

For Dr. Teng, though, Mondays were wonderful. He'd had to spend a whole weekend at home, away from his experiments - he didn't dare to try them on the weekends, since showing genuine interest in a patient made you stand out from the flock of apathetic doctors that cared for the rest of the rogues' gallery - and so he'd spent his time making notes, coming up with new twists and variations on his new medication and daydreaming about the day that he would finally get what he deserved. Perhaps he would need to build a new shelf for all the awards he was bound to win...

He strolled into his office, cheerfully greeting his secretary, and settled himself behind his massive desk. With jingling keys, he unlocked the drawer that held his telephone and set the device on his desk. The small light that indicated he had voicemail flashed next to the square of buttons on its face. He picked up the phone, dialed in his code, and listened with a little smirk on his face.

The smirk turned into shock, and then shock slowly firmed up into rage. Three inmates had _dared_ to steal his experiment out of the asylum, right under his nose! He hurled the telephone to the ground and kicked it, sending it pinwheeling into the nearest wall with a loud thump. 

"Are you all right?" his secretary called through the door.

He faked calm. "The phone fell," he called back, scraping the pieces of it together with the side of one foot. 

"You have a message from Dr. Carlson," she informed him, opening the door and holding out a little yellow slip of paper. He snatched it from her hand and read it over. Carlson wanted him to come to a staff meeting about his patient - ah, they must want his opinion on where she'd go next! 

He closed the door in his secretary's face and retreated to his desk. Oh, yes, they'd probably have all sorts of questions to ask him about her. The note even requested that he bring his file on her. He looked at the clock. The meeting was in fifteen minutes, just enough time to flip through it and refresh his memory about what he'd written. It was a pity she hadn't been more forthcoming with information - he'd had to pad it with the things he'd inferred from her brief statements, and though they were brilliant conclusions, it was a shame that she hadn't actually said any of it...

He finished his reading, gathered up the file, and strode to Carlson's office with the sober look of one who is worried about his charge in danger. As he walked through the halls, he began rehearsing what he'd say - how worried he was about her under the dubious attention of three confirmed psychotics, how his medication was so close to saving her, and how _only_ his medication would work, given that normal methods just wouldn't work on a little girl who wept sorrow from her skin. Ooo, yes, that was poetic. He'd have to remember that for his book, whenever he got around to writing it. 

He opened the door, expecting to see the usual cluster of white-coated doctors having coffee and discussing problem patients. Instead, the room was empty, except for a stony-faced Dr. Carlson and a group of blue-coated police officers. One of them stepped forward. 

"Reginald Teng? You're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent..."

His Miranda rights were read to him as the file fluttered from his fingers. No, this wasn't happening, this wasn't _happening_...he was going to be famous, he was going to be rich, he was going to be...

"...at the Stonegate Penitentiary while you await your trial," the cop finished as the silver handcuffs ratcheted noisily around his slim wrists. 

No. No. _No!_

(_to be continued_)

* * *

_Author's Note: Project Liberty is named after a witness in the David Brown case (California, in the 1980s/90s sometime - all my research material is currently 500 miles away, so I don't have the exact date handy)._


	4. Broken

Liberty Base was not nearly as grand as the name would appear. With a name like Liberty, the incoming inhabitants expect - oh, any number of things, with _liberty_ being at the top of the list. It's practically a foregone conclusion.

Imagine the surprise, then, on the faces of the four rogues as they were unceremoniously shoved into a bare concrete box of a room in a small building on the edge of Gotham. The big room was partitioned into little rooms - rooms with large windows in the doors and suspiciously restraint-esque clips on the sides of all the furniture. The house of Liberty was anything but free. This was reinforced by the line of cops leaning against the wall, watching Batman shoo the rogues inside.

"What a dump," Harley said as she kicked a table leg. "Doncha even have a TV here?"

"No," Batman said flatly. Ivy and Eddie shot one another a look of relief over Sorrow's head. Harley's tastes in television tended to be loud, bright, and overly cheerful - much like the jester herself - and they could definitely do without the irritation of cartoons tonight.

Sorrow was slumped in a jail-issue wheelchair. Contrary to Jonathan Crane's most fond wishes, screaming terror only lasts so long before it burns itself out. Sorrow had moved to that land beyond panicked fear where screaming is accepted as pointless and everything is equally frightful. She wasn't being tortured _right now_ and that was enough to keep her lips pressed tight.

Her hands were clenched tightly around the arms of the chair. Unlike the others, who had simply had handcuffs attaching their hands behind their backs, she'd been clipped in with two sets of cuffs - one for each arm of the wheelchair, since putting her arms behind her back was largely impossible. The double band of shiny metal on each wrist gleamed on either side of the dull strip that was the cuff given her by Teng.

"What're we doin' here, anyway?" Harley went on, giving the table leg another kick just to annoy Batman. "I thought we were goin' back to Arkham." Sorrow winced at the thought.

"You're staying here until Arkham is safe," Batman informed them in his typical gravelly growl.

"So, what, the rest of our lives, then?" Harley smirked. "Could be all right, with this crowd. Hey, good lookin'," she cooed at a rookie cop across the room, laden with a stack of tarnished metal trays. "Wanna have a little fun?"

He gulped and the trays clattered noisily to the floor. Harley giggled, her goal accomplished, and turned to needle the Bat again. Typically, he had vanished in the moment that everyone had looked away.

"Where'd he go?" the rookie gasped.

"Who cares?" Ivy snapped.

"Okay, okay, settle down," another policeman said, coming out of the nearest little subdivided room. "You cooperate with us and we'll make this as painless as possible. Sound good, guys?"

Ivy pinned the man with a glare. "I am not a _guy_," she informed him haughtily.

_Obviously_, he thought, glancing over her tiny leotard currently serving as her only clothing. "Sound good, _ladies_...and gentleman?" he tagged on to the end as Eddie narrowed his eyes meaningfully.

"Get to the point, Derman," a sergeant called from across the room. A handful of the other cops, shaking their heads at Derman's casualness, clustered around the rookie with the trays.

Derman smiled cheerfully at the foursome, ignoring his coworkers. "You're here as guests of the GCPD, so we've got to check you over for contraband. The good news is you get to keep your own clothes, since I don't think we have anything around here to fit your girlish figures." The scowl on Eddie's face carved itself a little deeper. "So, hands up and we'll get going." The cluster of cops, now armed with latex gloves and trays to hold confiscated items, stepped forward as Derman filled them in on where exactly they were staying.

The rogues of Gotham had multiple lairs. And, like law enforcement officials had done for centuries, the police had looked at the lairs and learned from them. In Gotham, where crime was the primary industry, multiple secret hiding places were very, very handy indeed - and Gotham police were very fond of fighting fire with fire.

All together, the GCPD owned around twenty separate buildings outright, with an ever-changing number of rented apartments and hotel rooms booked under fake names completing the collection. Liberty Base had been converted into a high-security hiding place, perfect for stashing witnesses until they testified and as headquarters for the occasional undercover operation. There were floors that had carpet and furnishings, for citizens that wished to cooperate - but for untrustworthy types like the rogues, there was this lovely concrete cage on the third floor.

Of course, the version that Derman told the rogues was slightly different. He glossed over the building's history, devoting most of his speech to the rules they'd be following while uniformed officers probed their pockets. (In Ivy's case, since she lacked pockets, one cop tentatively probed her hair and her cleavage while thinking uneasily of Jessica Rabbit's famed booby traps.)

The rules were fairly simple. They would agree to sit quietly and not do anything that hinted of mayhem, and in return the cops would not shoot them in the head. Since the cops in question were holding some serious weaponry, the rogues decided to cooperate. If there was one thing that they had learned through the years, it was that a perfect moment to escape _always_ comes along - and that being seated in a room full of uneasy policemen with guns was definitely _not_ that moment.

After the search (which was entirely _too_ personal, in Sorrow's opinion - it's not like she carried weapons, after all) and a brief stop for Harley and Sorrow to have their makeup scrubbed off with baby wipes, the cops guided them to the table in the middle of the room and suggested that they have a seat. This suggestion was elegantly transmitted via the use of hands on shoulders and abrupt downward pressure, accompanied by a few official-sounding grunts.

The police obviously wanted to keep the four of them in plain sight for as long as possible. They could get up to all sorts of mischief in their individual rooms. The Riddler could tease a lockpick out from some hidden pocket in his clothing and sneak away. Poison Ivy could coax some kind of man-eating mold out of the ceiling. (Well, it was _possible_. Many things were, in the minds of jumpy cops.)

But sitting at a table for hours didn't sound very enjoyable for the rogues. Harley wriggled in her seat, flexing her fingers and rattling her handcuffs. Then, with an impish grin, she waved dramatic fingers and produced a tiny deck of cards out of thin air. "Anyone up for poker?"

"Where did you get those?" the sergeant snapped as she strode up to the little table.

Harley shrugged. "I always keep 'em with me. Hey!" she yelped as the cop snatched them away. "Those are _mine_!"

"Do you honestly think we're going to let _you_ keep _playing cards_?" the sergeant sneered. "We're not stupid."

Harley drew herself up and, mockingly, snapped back "Do you honestly think I'd play poker with Red using _poisoned cards_?"

"You might, since she's immune and the other two are wearing gloves," the sergeant pointed out. "Did you check her wrist ruffles?" she asked the cop who had searched Harley.

"No."

The sergeant sighed and detached the ruffles. "Hey!" Harley protested, making to snatch them back.

"You move one more inch and you're going to be full of more holes than a prairie-dog patch," the sergeant informed her. She held them up and searched through them. "Yeah, here's an empty pocket that's the size of those cards...a few bullets..." Something that sounded a lot like a small, plastic wrapper crinkled under the cop's fingertips as Harley blushed a furious red. The sergeant did Harley the favor of bypassing that particular item. "...and a little picture of the Joker with lipstick on it. Cute." She tossed the ruffles to another cop.

"We were just gonna play cards," Harley sulked.

"Here." A well-worn full-sized deck of cards, rubberbanded together, thudded down on the table. The sergeant glared at the one that had thrown it. "Reynolds, why do _you_ have cards?"

He shrugged. "I get bored."

"Reynolds is our precinct poker champ, Stace," another cop offered. Sergeant Stacy, peeved at his casual attitude, went over to have a private word with him involving using nicknames in front of the master criminals.

The master criminals in question wasted no time in cracking the deck open and starting the game. In place of tokens, Eddie pulled out a double handful of pocket change. "Why are you carrying so many pennies?" Harley asked him.

He beamed. "Well, my target was the National Mint, and I'd thought up this great riddle. 'How is a chocolate like a -'"

"Just play the game," Ivy interrupted. Eddie sighed the deep, soulful sigh of the unappreciated and divvied up the coins. Sorrow, who had never played cards before - of any sort - waved her pile away, content to watch.

* * *

A sea of copper coins gleamed in front of Harley. Eddie and Ivy had silently, reluctantly joined in a partnership familiar among all gamers, the core belief of which is that the current winner must lose, and must lose _hard_. Between the two of them, though, they'd barely managed to weasel ten cents out of Harley's grasp.

Sorrow was only visually paying attention to the game. In fact, her attention was focused entirely on the conversation taking place behind her. Sergeant Stacy had finished lecturing her subordinate, and now they were quietly discussing the night ahead.

"Put Isley in the room to the left," Stacy ordered. "That's the furthest away from the street. And put Nygma between Isley and Quinn - that'll keep them from talking through the walls to one another."

"What about the other?"

"She's pretty harmless. Put her in the one at the end."

"That one's got a window in it, though."

"So? We're two stories up, and that window's almost impossible to open. It's not like she's going to climb out."

_Isn't it_? Sorrow thought meaningfully to herself. A window, huh? That sounded promising...

"...and anyway, we only have to watch them for tonight," Stacy was whispering. "They're going back to the nuthatch tomorrow."

Back. They were going _back_. They weren't going to listen to Batman and wait until it was safe, they were going back tomorrow and Teng was going to be _livid_ that she'd escaped...oh god, she was _dead_.

"I don't see why you're still mooning over him," Ivy's harsh, angry voice said, breaking her out of her reverie. She turned her attention back to the table, where Harley was toying with a face-up Joker card on the table, ignoring Ivy's angry glare. "Look what he did to her!" Sorrow twitched as Ivy pointed at her.

"Hey, she attacked _him_," Harley muttered.

"Not _that_," Ivy dismissed. "Tell me that's not Smilex he used on her, Harley."

"It's not!" Harley said firmly. "That woulda killed her."

"It almost did," Ivy shot back.

"Not like that, though," Harley tried to explain. "If Puddin' had done it, she'd be dead already. No offense," she shrugged to Sorrow.

"None taken."

"It does seem suspicious," Eddie agreed, toying with his cards and glancing sidelong at the deck. "It's definitely how he works."

Sorrow was inclined to disagree. Teng had seemed so proud of his...his _invention,_ and he certainly detested the rogues enough to make her think that he'd never willingly work with one. But...who says he'd have to work _with_ one? Smilex had been around in one form or another for years. It was believable - probable, even - that Teng had snuck a sample away from an evidence locker somewhere and altered it somehow.

Harley slapped Eddie's hand, making him drop the card he'd carefully palmed. "No cheatin', Ed," she admonished him solemnly. He muttered something under his breath and tossed his cards to the table. "I fold," he announced glumly.

Sorrow wasn't paying attention to the game anymore. What if Teng _was_ in league with the Joker? What if the whole thing had been some massive setup to break and kill her for their own amusement? What if...she shook her head violently. What-if conspiracy theories would have to wait until she had the time to think about them.

With a yawn composed entirely of exhaustion, she eyed a cop. "Can I go to bed?" she asked.

The cop looked to Stacy for orders. "You can," she said guardedly. "Danielson? Take care of it."

Officer Danielson, a man with more beard than face, took the back of her chair and wheeled her away. "Good night," she called to the rogues.

"'Night," they called back absently, watching Eddie deal the next hand. The cop pushed her into the room at the end of the row - the one with the window! - and began untangling her from the mess of handcuffs that pinned her arms to the chair. When he had her fully unwound, he lifted her up and dumped her on top of the bed like so much garbage.

"Hey," she said, weakly, trying to pack as much little-girl innocence into her tone as possible. "Can I have the window open? It's stuffy in here." Danielson considered her for a moment. She gently eased herself into a position that mimicked the most lost and pitiable of people. "Please?"

He leaned over her and yanked the window open with one powerful shove. "Better?"

"Much better, thank you. Good night," she said quietly.

"Yeah. Night," he muttered, scooting out of the room to watch the end of the poker game.

_Sucker_, she thought triumphantly. She leaned out of the window and eyed the distance to the ground. It didn't look good. At least there was an open dumpster down there...if she aimed just right, she probably could hit it. With quick hands, she balled up the blankets and sheets and tossed them out. They'd be better padding than nothing. The pillows went on top of the pile.

She didn't even consider making them into a rope. Climbing down a rope required a lot more strength than she had left - and climbing down a rope, legless, was virtually impossible unless your upper body was ruggedly ripped. Sorrow's was not.

Now all she had to do was wait for the right moment...

* * *

The three remaining rogues were having a lighthearted conversation over the remains of the poker game. It's difficult to have a conversation of any kind in the presence of guns aimed at your vital organs, but since the trio were more than used to lethal weapons being pointed at them, they dismissed them as unimportant.

The conversation was currently touching on Batman and his worth in relation to the police. Now, the more corrupt examples of Gotham's police departments wouldn't have given a damn about Batman. Unfortunately for them, they'd been kicked out of Gotham long ago. The remainder, particularly the newer recruits, were desperately trying to prove that they could do just as good a job at crimefighting as some freak in a mask. It was just too bad for them that this _particular_ masked freak was superhumanly good in all areas of crimefighting, and they didn't stand a chance. The rogues were having a wonderful time watching the cops get more and more irritated with every word that they said.

"...and that time that Puddin' and I robbed that bank," Harley was giggling. "I heard that when Batsy showed up, one of the cops actually _shot_ him!" Still laughing, she reached out her hands and scooped the last of the pennies into her massive pile.

Ivy threw her cards down in disgust. "Harley, I don't believe you won that much. _Nobody_ wins that much."

Harley turned and gave Officer Reynolds a hearty wink. "You do when they're _marked_ cards!" she sang triumphantly.

It was well known that Harley Quinn had a gift for generating chaos. In this particular case, her chirpy little statement set off a near-riot - among her fellow players, among the cops, and particularly involving those cops that had previously been the victim of Officer Reynolds' 'card skills'. Voices raised in loud shouts of protest screamed over one another, trying to be heard.

And in her room, Sorrow grinned at the cacophony and pitched herself headlong out the window.

* * *

The moon rose high over Gotham that night. It seemed to glimmer extra-bright, as if it was trying to drown out the ever-present Bat-signal planted firmly on a nearby cloud. The moonlight turned the sidewalks into glittery, twinkling paths that stretched endlessly into the night.

They stretched particularly long in the mind of Sorrow as she dragged herself away from the hateful little building. She had to get away. Had to. And if that meant tearing her clothes and skin on the rough cement, then that's how it had to be. At least she hadn't hurt herself too badly in the dumpster...

She pulled another numb leg into position. All of her good humor had faded as she'd started painfully hauling herself away from the so-called forces of good. How _could_ they take her back to that horrible place? Weren't they supposed to care about justice? Where was the justice in delivering her back to hell?

At least she couldn't feel the skin on her knees as she left it in scraps and shreds on the pavement. She shuddered to a halt, looking frantically for a hiding spot as the sticky sounds of tires on asphalt advertised a vehicle's presence. A canary-yellow taxi rolled gently to a stop next to her. The window descended. "Miss? Need a lift?"

A friendly cab driver. She nodded weakly and somehow managed to climb into the car. "Docks…the warehouses on the docks," she said, falling back on the seat.

"You got friends down there?"

She was too tired for tears. "No."

* * *

The bread was frozen, and the knives were all dirty. It didn't matter. Food, that was the important thing. Sorrow sprawled in front of the toaster, waiting for the two slices of bread she'd chipped loose to thaw. The strawberry jelly was sitting out on the cold linoleum, the peanut butter already open and waiting next to it.

She was a mess, and she knew it. She'd pushed herself too hard to get here. But what choice did she have? She couldn't just let them take her.

She looked herself over. No wonder the taxi driver had picked her up. She looked like she'd been hit by a bus - a spiky bus made out of sandpaper, piloted by a porcupine. It would probably be a good idea to bandage over some of the nastier scrapes...but then again, what was the point? Someone might need those bandages for something important someday.

The toast popped up. She made her sandwich quickly, slathering on the peanut butter and jelly, eating huge bites. Food. _Her_ food, safe, untampered with, deliciously tasteless. She finally stopped, stuffed beyond fullness, and curled into a ball, sleeping on the floor of the kitchen.

The sun began to climb over the rooftops of Gotham.

* * *

Liberty Base came alive at sunrise. The guards knew that the next shift would be coming in soon, so they perked up at the thought of going home. Babysitting rogues was definitely not their chosen way to spend a night.

Officer Danielson, who had spent the night at Sorrow's door, leaned heavily against the doorframe. He hadn't heard a sound from inside all evening. With a smirk on his face, he waved at his less-lucky co-officers, who had had the privilege of listening to Harley Quinn's out-of-key songs through her door all night long after the semi-riot had died down long enough to get the trio locked firmly in their separate rooms. At least he hadn't had to do anything other than stand outside. Paraplegics hardly required a heavy guard.

"Get them out," Sergeant Stacy ordered. "The van'll be here in ten minutes."

And after the van left, he could go home! With a smile on his face, Danielson grabbed the wheelchair leaning up against the wall and used it to knock Sorrow's door open. "Wakey wakey," he said cheerfully. "Did you...sleep...oh,_ shit_." The bed had no sheets, no blankets, no pillows, and, most importantly, no Sorrow. Panic gripped him for a moment. Well, she couldn't have gotten far, could she? He stuck his head out of the window - the window that _he'd_ opened, he remembered with a grimace - and looked down. Directly beneath him was an open dumpster, covered over with the missing bedding. A trail of garbage and...was that blood?...led not two blocks down the sidewalk, where it abruptly disappeared after veering to the curb.

Oh, he was going to be in _so_ much trouble for this...

* * *

Every news channel in town was represented at Arkham that day. The leading story of the morning was the firing of Dr. Teng, who was suspected of illegal and highly immoral practices. (The press, naturally, were over the moon with joy at the thought of their upcoming ratings.) The secondary story, conveniently enough, was also located at Arkham - the return of three rogues to their rightful cells.

A police van, windowless and armored, skidded to a halt outside the forbidding asylum. Harley Quinn was the first down the ramp, decked out in her spandex, tassels waving merrily in the breeze. Poison Ivy was next, glaring venemously at the guards that hustled her quickly onto the concrete steps leading inside. The Riddler was last in line, blinking as the bright sunrise smacked his retinas. He tipped his hat with handcuffed hands to a member of the press as his guards urged him along.

A shadow seated atop the Asylum narrowed its eyes at the spectacle. One was missing.

The press babbled questions at Harley and Eddie as they waved and bowed, posing for pictures and playing celebrity. Ivy pointedly ignored the chaos. "Why did you escape?" "Why did you take that Shadow girl with you?"

Harley turned and snapped at the reporter "Sorrow! Her name's Sorrow!" She went back to waving and grinning for the cameras.

"Well, where is this Sorrow gal? Off crying somewhere?" the man joked to his friend from channel 7, nudging him in the ribs. His smile faded as the three rogues focused their attention on him.

"You'd have to ask Officer Danielson about that," Ivy said sweetly. She turned to the aforementioned officer, who winced as twelve separate cameras swung in his direction.

"No comment," he barked gruffly, tugging meaningfully on Eddie's arm to get him moving.

"He let her go!" Harley said to the nearest camera. "Wish he'd been _my_ guard."

"Officer Danielson! Officer Danielson!"

"NO COMMENT!" he bellowed, abandoning his charge in favor of a strategic retreat to the inside of the armored van.

* * *

The trio of rogues sat in the intake room, chained to the floor in separate corners. Harley made a silly face at Ivy, who rolled her eyes.

The door swung open, but instead of the doctor or the orderly that they all expected, it was -

"Batman!" shrieked Harley, trying to leap to her feet. Since her cuffs were fastened to a chain in the floor, she ended up overbalancing and falling to the Bat's feet. "Ow."

"What are you doing here, Bat-boy?" inquired Edward. "I assumed you'd be back in your cave by now." He leaned back as much as he could on the uncomfortable bench and smirked.

"Where's Sorrow?"

"A riddle we'd all like answered," Eddie said.

"Don't play games with me, Nygma."

"Games? Me?" Eddie asked, innocence coating his words like chocolate on a raisin. "Never."

Batman tended to respond to sarcasm in one of two ways: with his fists, or with his feet. Since Eddie was firmly chained to the ground by his wrists, he settled for grabbing him by the collar and jerking him upward. He was used to doing this kind of thing, and years of experience had taught him how to judge the exact amount of pressure he could apply before dislocating joints or doing other, more serious injury.

Eddie was hardly in a position to appreciate it. His arms started to lengthen under the enormous amounts of Bat-pressure. "Let me go!" he yelped.

"I'll ask you one more time," Batman growled, bending down and shoving his very angry face into Eddie's. "_Where is she_?"

"She jumped out the window and disappeared!" Eddie gasped, trying to hook his heels under the bench to drag himself earthward.

"That's impossible."

"That's what happened!" Eddie insisted.

The door slammed open and a green-suited orderly scrambled in. "Batman, I'm glad I caught you!" he panted, not paying attention to the Riddler taffy-pull going on in the corner. "Killer Croc escaped last night and-"

"I'll deal with it," Batman interrupted, dropping the Riddler back onto his bench. Eddie, arms dangling limply over his legs, glared daggers at the vigilante as he stalked away.

* * *

Post-traumatic stress disorder does not exist in the movies. On the silver screen, when the struggling teenage heroine breaks free from the psychotic killer with the big knife, she runs away and is safe forever (that is, until the filmmakers decide to make a sequel). Oh, the near-victim may have nightmares, but that will generally be it. The Will Grahams and the Paul Sheldons of the fictional world are rare indeed.

In the real world, they are more common than not. Part of overcoming the fear is realizing that you are safe. It's over. It cannot happen again. But in Sorrow's case, it _wasn't_ over. It could happen again, at any minute - and she was left with one hiding spot, the one in which she'd been captured in a mere month ago.

She'd tried to get back to her old routine. She'd dragged herself around the warehouse alone, without the distractions of newspapers or television, and tried to put together a plan - a bank robbery, a museum heist, _something_ - and every time, she ended up shaking at the thought that she'd just end up back under Teng's thumb in the asylum.

How could she not go back? She'd reform!...and it wouldn't do any good. She'd tried living legally, long ago, and had quickly discovered that being different means that no one wants you around...and that included employers. It had taken only a few months on the street to drive her into crime.

She couldn't sleep, she no longer wanted to eat, and she was a _bad person_. That was the thought that haunted her minute to minute - she was a _bad person_ and she _deserved_ all this pain.

It may sound odd that she cared. She was, after all, a _rogue_ - second or third-string, perhaps, but still, a member of Gotham's most infamous. She'd had her own moral code, though - perhaps not quite as stringent as the average person's, but she stuck to it. She never hurt anyone unless she had to. She never stole from anyone who couldn't afford it. And, most importantly, she never killed anyone unless they deserved it.

But it wasn't good enough. Living that way had gotten her hurt, and semi-paralyzed, and tortured, and almost killed. She was living the best life she could and it wasn't enough.

She couldn't keep being a rogue and she couldn't go straight.

There was really only one option left.

* * *

There were no henchmen. There were no traps. There were no grandiose plots, there were no trademark weapons, no people in danger, no vats of dangerous bubbling chemicals. There was just a girl on the roof, staring at the moon, propped up on a makeshift railing wrapped around the gaping hole in the shingles at her feet.

She heard the tread of his boots on the crackling rooftop before he thought to mask it.

"You found me," she said softly, forcing the emotion out of her voice so that it rang flatly in his ears.

"Yes." He was walking carefully now, but she could still hear him.

"Don't come any closer."

He froze and analyzed the situation. Her back was to him, she could have anything in her hands. She was looking up, though, not down, looking up at the moon. Her night vision would be affected. He crouched, tensed his muscles, and prepared to leap.

"The moon is so beautiful, isn't it? So bright…" She sighed. Then, with a weird wrenching of her body, she twisted around and tossed something in his direction. The momentum carried her backward through the hole in the roof.

He reacted before he thought, spinning away from the object, running toward the hole, following at all costs. She wasn't going to get away this time. The batarang and the cord looped itself around her waist and caught her securely before she could run…He paused. There was nowhere for her to run to. The hole led straight down onto the warehouse floor. There was nothing but empty space for three stories leading to cold concrete.

She hadn't been trying to run.

She was sobbing now, and tearing at the cord with both hands. "Let me go, damn you," she snarled. "Let me _go_! It's what you want, isn't it? It's what all of you want!"

"No, it isn't." He pulled her up to him and deftly caught her clawing hands, tethering them together with a twist of his rope. The rest of it went in loops around her arms and legs. Then, carefully, he eased her to his shoulder and padded quietly past the limp grey rose laying on the shingles. Using the rope he'd left attached on his arrival, he lowered the two of them off of the roof and down into the darkness of the alley.

She was crying, and howling, and trying her best to kick him with her lashed-together legs. The members of the press, gathered at the waiting armored van, hoisted their cameras into the ready position.

He didn't want to take her out there - but he'd already passed up two calls on the scanner for this. Other people needed him. He strode into the dim, orange streetlights, dumped her in a waiting cop's arms, and disappeared into the night.

She writhed once, twice, spasmed again and again, growling, groaning, kicking futilely against her bonds. She didn't even notice the news camera zooming in on her, getting the full shot of her torn and dirty clothes, bloodied, ripped, coming up to rest on her face as they shoved the needle into her neck and she pulsed once, again, teeth bared, screaming, then sagged down into darkness.

* * *

Harley covered her eyes. Ivy put her arm around her shoulder, patting her, still staring vacantly at the evening news. Edward shook his head silently, closing his eyes.

"She's…gonna be all right, isn't she, Red?" Harley asked, finally.

"Of course she is. She'll be fine," said Ivy reassuringly. She only wished that she believed it.

* * *

_Author's Note: Paul Sheldon is from Stephen King's _Misery_, and Will Graham is from Thomas Harris' _Red Dragon_. _

_Sorrow's story will continue in _'Shattered'_. In related news, I think I need a hug._


End file.
